Clayton Emery: Mortal Consequences

But a shaman was worthless without a tribe, and so, defying the sentence of death, Sunbright journeyed home. And Knucklebones, herself cast to the winds, went with him, knowing she might be executed too. So, without a plan, and with little hope, they trudged across the darkening wastes.

After a time, Knucklebones said, "It's a long way to come for revenge."

"I don't want revenge!" Sunbright snapped. "I want…"

"What?" she asked, peeking around her furred hood.

"I want to clear my name, and that of my father," the shaman, staring at the dark horizon, said. "I want to find out why my father died, if possible. I want to disprove the notion that I'll bring destruction to the tribe. I want-I just want to go home. And I feel-I know bad times are coming. I want to be with my tribe, for good or ill."

"Do you mean the fall of the Netherese Empire? That's not for three hundred and fifty-odd years yet."

"No, sooner trouble. I've dreamt of it."

Knucklebones's sigh blew fog. "I believe you," she said. "A shaman's dreams are both a gift and a curse. Sometimes you thrash all night, then drag yourself through the day, half asleep."

The barbarian nodded grimly and said, "And sometimes dreams show the future, or distant events, and sometimes they mean nothing. Sorting them out is the chore."

"Why do it then? Why take the responsibility of being a shaman? It must be hell trying to advise folk on what's true and what's false."

Oddly, the shaman grinned in the darkness, his fine white teeth glowing by starlight. "Better to be a thief," he asked, "see what one can steal without losing a hand? Like a jackdaw waiting to swoop down and steal a button?"

"Yes, better that. Life is simple for thieves. If you can carry something off, fine. The owner should have been more careful. It teaches folks responsibility."

Sunbright laughed aloud, and swatted her fanny wrapped in wool and fur. "I'll remember that," he said. "But you were born to be a thief and I a shaman, like my father and forebears. We can't escape our destiny, we can only endure it."

Knucklebones cast about the barren landscape, which hadn't changed a jot to her eye. "I'll be glad to escape this wasteland."

"Wasteland?" Sunbright barked a laugh. "This is beautiful country! Wide open, bright and clean, sweet-smelling, sharp-edged, and simple. Either you adapt or you die."

Knucklebones saw snow and stars. "Perhaps," she mumbled. "Maybe in the summertime…"

"Oh, no. Summer's a sea of mud. Bog so thick and gooey it jerks your boots off. No, in summer you're a prisoner of the land, and have to camp by the sea and stay put. In winter you can hitch up dog or reindeer sleds, or strap on snowshoes or skis, and go wherever you want. No, this is the finest time of year!"

The thief swallowed a groan.

More walking, for the tenth straight day. A rest with cold rations, since they had nothing to burn. Eating snow for water. Walking and more walking. Trudging through fog for two days once. Darkness, daylight, darkness. Boots crunching a million times, and walking on.

Just when Knucklebones thought she'd go screaming mad, a spark glowed on the horizon. "Is that a village?" she asked.

"No. Northern lights."

The thief stared in awe. Reds and blues shimmered like rainbow curtains in the sky. The colors danced, dipped, soared, settled, jiggled, never still.

"They're beautiful!"

"You're learning," Sunbright chuckled. "Feel? The land dips. And hear that?"

The part-elf tipped her hood to reveal pointed ears. Far off she heard a jabbering, the first noise in days.

"What is it?"

"A rookery. A nesting ground for puffins."

They walked faster over snow tinged red and blue by northern lights. Gradually the land sloped, then dropped by the frozen stream Sunbright had mentioned. (And found unerringly, she noted, after ten days of walking through a void.) The slope grew lumpy with rocks where the tundra had been scraped away eons ago. Rocks the size of skulls lay beside boulders as big as houses. Scattered amidst them bobbed knee-high birds with black bodies, white masks, and fat yellow beaks. Even at midnight they were busy, waddling, gossiping, arguing, fighting, lovemaking, even tumbling and sliding on their bellies down a slick mud slope. Knucklebones laughed, "It looks like market day!"

Sunbright pointed and said, "And down that rill we'll find my tribe. They've wintered here for centuries, pulling the whitefish through the ice and salting them down…"

His voice was mixed with joy and sorrow. Happiness at seeing his tribe and mother, sadness that they might be killed outright. Or driven away again. Knucklebones wondered which, for Sunbright, would be the crueler fate.

Skirting rocks, careful of twisting ankles, they negotiated the rill by starlight, then touched coarse sand. A bluff rose at their right, and the frozen arm of the sea trapped a narrow beach between. Ice floes grinding together drowned out the happy clatter of the puffins.

Down the beach they walked and walked. At every step Sunbright strode faster, until Knucklebones trotted to keep up. Finally they rounded the bluff, and walked onto a sandy spit. Before them loomed the growling, ice-packed ocean. And nothing else.

"Where are they?"

Sunbright cast about again and again. "I… I don't know."

Knucklebones felt a pang for him. "But-if they're not here-where can they be?"

The shaman's voice drifted away. "I don't know. I can't even guess…"

The gulguthhydra was hungry. It was always hungry. Now it sensed food approaching.

The cavern was black, so its many heads couldn't see. The gulguthhydra was also black, though its dozen eyes would shine dull white in any light. The monster looked like a hill of black thorns that sprouted necks studded with scales like chips of volcanic glass, and atop the necks were fang-studded mouths, pug noses, and short, sharp ears. Too, the beast sported a pair of tentacles. All these writhing organs roved over the walls and floor of the cavern incessantly, scouring the stone so often it was worn smooth as far as the beast could reach. Centuries ago, the black hydra had been captured by the pit fiend Prinquis, and rooted in this corridor by magic. Over decades, it had scraped the walls clean, caught the occasional rat or bat or lesser imp, growing a tiny bit at a time, reaching a little further with tooth and tentacle.

But always it was starving, and here came food.

The creature picking along the corridor came with a heavy tread. The monster was taller than a tall man, naked but for an ugly, lumpy, flinty hide formed of something stronger than stone, for its jagged feet scratched and nicked the polished stone floor. In light, the flinty hide would have glistened slightly, so dense were the minerals that made up its skin. It had hands and feet like a human, but no eyelids, so its blue eyes were round and staring and frightening. No hair, no fingernails or toenails, no marks on its body except the dense flint.

It talked to itself in a gravelly voice like steel on a grindstone. The gulguthhydra perked up, stilled its lashing heads and tentacles to wait until the flint creature was close enough to seize. This being would make a fine meal.

"Out. This must be the way out. Must be. Outside, finally. Out…"

Closer trod the crusty feet of the monster. The hydra lunged.

Three heads struck as one. One dived from the right, one from the left, one straight down, like three fingers snatching a morsel. Toothy mouths clamped onto the flint creature in the same second, biting hard and gnashing fast to rip the prey to flinders, to reduce it to bloody gobbets before it could escape, or even limp away wounded.

The flinty fiend was knocked to its knees under the triple assault. One arm and one shoulder were pinned by mouths, and its head had been sucked into the maw of the largest head. Yet fangs broke on the stony hide, so the gulguthhydra's mouths filled with chips and black blood. Champing furiously didn't tear the stone skin, or even dent it.